The Riddle of Humanity

CONTENTS

LECTURE ONE, 29 July 1916

Greetings to the builders working on the Goetheanum. Otto Weininger, a decadent genius. Distorted pictures of imaginative knowledge.

LECTURE TWO, 30 July 1916

Two spheres of existence in nature and in man the realm of regularity and the realm of irregularity. The ancient Hebrews' awareness of time. Their Jubilee Year as the expression of formative powers of the soul.

LECTURE THREE, 31 July 1916

The duality of human nature — the heavenly and the earthly aspects of man. Uranus and Gaia. Influences of one incarnation on the next. Metamorphoses of the body.

LECTURE FOUR, 5 August 1916

The human organism, results of prenatal formative powers. The dual nature of man. The powers behind the existence of the body as expressed pictorially by the body and as expressed in a draughtsman-like fashion by the head. The relationship between the three-foldness of human nature and knowledge, aesthetics and morality.

LECTURE FIVE, 6 August 1916

How a person grows into the three spiritual realms of wisdom, beauty and goodness. How these shine down into the spiritual part of man. Physiology of the imaginative psyche. Man in the spheres of morality, aesthetic impulse and impulse towards truth.

LECTURE SIX, 7 August 1916

The transformation of the physical body into the head of the next incarnation. The cosmic significance of human knowledge.

LECTURE SEVEN, 12 August 1916

The connection between the human being and the cosmos. The twelve regions of the senses and the seven life processes.

LECTURE EIGHT, 13 August 1916

How twelve-foldness, seven-foldness, four-foldness and three-foldness are mirrored. Pathological experiences of the soul (Carl Ludwig Schleich). Thinking backwards as a preparation for spiritual experience (Christian von Ehrenfels).

LECTURE NINE, 15 August 1916

Enlivening the sense processes and ensouling the life processes. Aesthetic enjoyment and aesthetic creativity. Logic and the sense for reality.

LECTURE TEN, 21 August 1916

Loss of the ability to orient oneself in reality and the helplessness of modern scientific criteria.

LECTURE ELEVEN, 26 August 1916

Memory and habit as metamorphoses of former spiritual experiences that were subject to Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences.

LECTURE TWELVE, 27 August 1916

How thoughts are engraved into the substance of the cosmos and the consequences following from this.

LECTURE THIRTEEN, 28 August 1916

The allocation of the whole human form to the cosmos. Technical discoveries and the human physical organisation. Collisions between thinking that accords with reality and thinking that is in opposition to reality. How occultism wanders into false paths.

LECTURE FOURTEEN, 2 September 1916

Metamorphoses of the twelve sense zones through Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences.

LECTURE FIFTEEN, 3 September 1916

The reorganisation of the seven life processes by Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. Francis Bacon inaugurates materialism and the science of idols.

NOTES